Why has data capture become increasingly important in business?

The concept of document capture or document scanning has been around for some time but the ability to capture the data from a document is a more recent development.

Businesses are now shifting away from manual data entry to automated data capture. Manual data entry is time consuming, labour intensive, slow and expensive. Automating information gathering is by far the preferred option as it is fast, accurate and inexpensive. The speed at which information can be fed into a system, for example, for invoicing purposes, can seriously affect cash flow. The faster data is collected, the quicker the money will come in. Data capture can also have an impact on product to market time and can help you stay ahead of competitors.

One of the most popular ways of collecting data is to use OCR (optical character recognition) which ‘reads’ and interprets information contained in a document an integrates it into an information system. There are, however, other means of capturing data such as the digital pen. This device looks and feels much like a traditional ball point pen and is used in conjunction with special paper which has been overlaid with a series of tiny dots invisible to the eye. It is particularly effective for field workers  who spend a lot of time form filling. As soon as all the fields have been completed the data can be instantly uploaded to an office IT System for processing, thus eliminating the need to manually input the information which has been collected. The digital pen is used widely by insurance companies, logistics companies, the NHS and the Police.

For further information about data capture and the various solutions available, please contact the IPC Group on 08081 45 46 47